Ranson Notes

This happened last year, when my middle son was in 4th grade.

My son loved his teacher, I couldn't wait to meet her at open school.  It ended for me there.  First, let me say that it is  300 degrees in the school, and not a fan in sight.  We just sat though my youngest child's open house, and still had to go and meet the Horizon's teacher to discuss her curriculum.  Both my boys get pulled out 1 day a week to go to this program.  Then they need to make up their classwork and homework that night, plus their Horizons work.  Another story.

So this teacher looks to be mid 20's and is explaining everything and then she holds up these sheets of paper.  On the paper is about 200 letters.  She starts explaining how she will send home 3 sheets per night, we Ithe children) are to   cut them out and put them in seperate zip lock bags.  We will continue this until we have all the letter of the alphabet, plus capital letters.  Then the children are expected to do thier spelling words using these letters 2 times a week.

So my huband (wonderful support group that he is) says "oh, kind of like kiddie ransom notes".  Well all these parents break out in laughter and said teacher was not amused.  Seems she feels that having the children do it this way, as oppossed to writing thier words 3 or 4 times each, will make them more AWARE of the spelling.

So now it's my turn to speak up .  Mind you, not one other parent is saying a word.

I said "I have 5 cats in the house, this is going to be a horrendous project for us and I don't want you to be mad at my son when I keep asking  you for new letters because whatever letters are on the floor, will be in the vaccuum".  Sweet little teacher responds that it is not a problem.

Let me tell you how those baggies DID NOT work!  YOu could never find the letter that you were looking for, the cats/kittens thought that the baggies were for them, and just as I predicted, I was asking her constantly for new letters.

Well, we finally got the system down, switching to baby food jars, with a label on them reflecting what letter was inside.  This was torture.  I complained constantly.  This would take up 1 hour of time to complete.  The words were long, not 3 or 5 letters.  They were mostly 9 letter words.

Then I took to torturing the teacher.  I would write her every day about what letter I needed.  She got so tired of supplying them to me, that she finally sent me 2 sets of them.  Well, did she think that was going to stop me?  Ha Ha!  Still asked for them.

I saved those darn letters just in case my next in line had the same teacher.  Thank God he doesn't.

Guess what?  She sat down over the summer and did t hem herself, and announced at open house this year that she isn't doing them anymore and can't believe that she tortured paraents and children with that for so many years.

Go figure...better yet, go have some kids before you start assigning homework to mine!